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Three original stories are the basis for our study of rewriting during the French Ancien Regime: the story of Thibaud de la Jacquiere, that of the "sorcier Gaufridy" and that of the Marquise de Ganges, which Sade will rewrite as a novel. Having all originated from a "canard", they appear in the 1679 edition of the Histoires tragiques of Francois de Rosset, and two of them can also be found in Francois Gayot de Pitaval's Causes celebres. Each of these stories was rewritten by different authors at least three times. Using Gerard Genette's theory of the narrative, we will analyse the processes of transformation that the rewriting operates in the text, as well as the changes it imposes to its original meaning. The number of rewritings of each text---up to five for the Marquise de Gange---is a testament to the importance of textual reappropriation as much as it shows the relevance of a study which brings to light the role of rewriting in the survival of these stories.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the French garden history witnesses the triumph and then the decline of the French formal garden, to which succeeds the fashion of landscape gardening of foreign inspiration. Integrating and nourishing this debate, the literary texts of that period enable to grasp the stakes that it brings up. The garden notably lends itself to the expression of an emerging sentiment of nature, as well it also serves that of a political thought enlightened by new ideas. Effectively, the treatment that these texts give to the garden is a witness to the revival that installs itself in the way of conceiving nature, and the relation that nature holds with man and the art of the gardens. The garden's topic and scenography are a testimony of changes that in turn affect its imaginary and that of the walk. Finally, the critical discourse exploits the analogy that establishes itself between the art of the gardens and the exercise of power, polarizing the debate around the political metaphor.

The early Canadian long poem has often been faulted for its lack of aesthetic integrity, being seen in many cases as little more than poorly "versified rhetoric," but it has never been submitted to a thorough rhetorical analysis. An investigation of the rhetorical devices at work in the early Canadian long poem, however, reveals them to be highly strategic operations of both the imperial-colonial project in British North America and the emerging national consciousness of the new nation of Canada. These operations may be understood more clearly through the close examination of periodic "ruptures" in the texts--inconsistencies, contradictions, anomalies, and deflections--which underscore the frequently conflictual nature of the "unsaid" (the real historical, economic and social conditions) and the surface level of the narrative (the aesthetic and generic constraints). Such an analysis reveals the extent to which the problems of allegiance, anxiety and identity were inextricably involved in the colonial and national projects, an involvement which the poetry, despite its intentions, could neither mask nor resolve.

Although the letter purports to represent fact, it cannot avoid having a partly or potentially fictive status, turning as it does on the complex interplay between the real and the imagined. Consequently, the main critical approach of this paper is to consider the interactions between conflicting modes of expression in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epistolary fiction. The rhetorical and conceptual contrarieties that I examine are broadly characterized by the contradiction between the implied spontaneity of the familiar letter and the inevitable artifice of its form. Working with familiar letters by four writers between the years 1740 and 1825, I specifically address various narrative patterns by which each turns to the act of communication to draw upon the experience of an isolated self. Against a background which explores the main developments in epistolary fiction and a historical progression of the uses and significance of letter-writing, I investigate epistolary texts by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lord Byron, John Keats, and William Hazlitt. In turning to letters by each author, I explore the literary, theoretical and especially the psychological implications of the tenuous divisions between fact and fiction. In particular, my analysis stresses that letter-writing is an authorial act in which writing about the self can be understood as a literary form of self-portraiture or creative expression. / I examine this claim---and the metaphors defining it---in two ways. First, by focusing on selected letters, I foreground each writer's language as an agent of internal conflict. In so doing, I am able to formulate distinctive questions regarding the potential of epistolary narratives to transform emotional or psychological schisms into fictions which become explicitly creative texts. Secondly, I analyze the changing nature of the fictions which emerge through this process. My findings conclude that authors' letters must be read, at least very often, as a constituent part of their literary work and as interpretive models of a shifting dynamic of psychological expression.

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The main purpose of this study is to prove that the view on the American Indians, as it is presented in the plays, is determined by two dissimilar sets of values: those related to Christianity and those associated with democracy. The Christian ideals of mercy and benevolence are counterbalanced by the democratic values of freedom and patriotism in such a way that secular ideals in many cases supersede the religious ones. To achieve the purpose of the dissertation, I sifted the plays for a list of notions related to Christianity and, using textual evidence, demonstrated that these notions were not confined to particular pieces but systematically appeared in a significant number of plays. This method allowed me to make a claim that the motif of Christianity was one of the leading ones, yet it was systematically set against another major recurrent subject—the values of democracy. I also established the types of clerical characters in the plays and discovered their common characteristic—the ultimate bankruptcy of their ideals. This finding supported the main conclusion of this study: in the plays under discussion, Christianity was presented as no longer the only valid system of beliefs and was strongly contested by the outlook of democracy.I discovered that the motif of Christianity in the American Indian plays reveals itself in three ways: in the superiority of Christian civilization over Indian lifestyle, in the characterization of Indians within the framework of Christian morality, and in the importance of Christian clergy in the plays. None of these three topics, however, gets an unequivocal interpretation. First, the notion of Christian corruption is distinctly manifest. Second, the Indian heroes and heroines demonstrate important civic virtues: desire for freedom and willingness to sacrifice themselves for their land. Third, since the representation of the clerics varies from saintliness to villainy, the only thing they have in common is the impracticability and incredulity of the ideas they preach. More fundamental truths, it is suggested, should be sought outside of Christianity, and the newly found values should be not so much of a "Christian" as of "democratic" quality. / Department of English

The eighteenth-century British novel derived its purpose, structure, and theory of characterization from the life-history, in the form of biography or autobiography. In eighteenth-century Britain both the novel and the life-history emerged in recognizably modern forms. Like the life-history, the novel maintained as its purpose the Horatian maxim that art should both instruct and entertain. Moreover, the novel and the life-history shared the same structure, as each novel purported to be the biography or autobiography of the title character of the work. Finally, the novel and the life-history adopted the same theories of characterization for the major as well as minor characters within the works.However, life-writing was at this time in a period of transition from the static to the dynamic theory of characterization. This transition came as a result of a significant change in the view of the source of personality. In the static life-history the central subject, as well as the minor figures, possessed an innate, unchanging personality. Thus when Plutarch wrote of Alexander or of Julius Caesar, these figures were depicted as men born to greatness. However, each was imperfect, possessing in the Aristotelian sense a tragic flaw. In the main this theory was significant because it placed no value on what was later to be considered so important in the development of personality-the individual's experiential life.In direct contrast to the static theory, the dynamic view of personality was the result of Cartesian and Lockean psychology which saw personality as the direct result of not the innate but instead the experiential processes. The experiences of the central character, rather than exemplifying innate qualities, now were seen as shaping and delineating that personality. The application of this new theory to both the modern novel and life-history produced a central character or characters growing according to the dynamic theory, though the minor characters remained "type" characters in accordance with the static theory.Therefore, the sources of the British eighteenth-century novel lay both in the dynamic biographies and autobiographies of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century and in the classical life-writers beginning with Plutarch and Josephus, as well. In this study the primary classical works analyzed are Josephus, the portrait of Herod in the Jewish Antiquities and his own in The Life; Plutarch's "Julius Caesar" and Suetonius' "Julius Caesar"; St. Augustine's Confessions; Dante's Vita Nuova; and the transitional Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. The adoption of the new dynamic theory is illustrated in two life-histories: Colley Cibber's Apology and Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage.The application of the dynamic theory to eighteenth-century autobiographical novels is exemplified by Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Tobias G. Smollett's Roderick Random. Though there was a complex psychological portrait of Richardson's Pamela Andrews, with a number of moral digressions, there were little character development and few digressions in Smollett's novel.A far more complex treatment of the theories of personality occurred in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. As narrator Tristram centered the work upon the four.crucial accidents that had formed his personality, and on those other three dynamic characters who were connected with these misfortunes--the Shandy brothers and Parson Yorick. In contrast, minor characters such as Dr. Slop were drawn according to the static theory. The digressions within the work were encased within a comic-satiric framework. Thus the two theories of personality--static and dynamic--which informed eighteenth-century life-writing served also as the principal source for characterization in the eighteenth-century British autobiographical novel.